The tale of Heart of Darkness is a classic bad to worse story in that each event, each sequence is more gut wrenching and awful than the previous one. This darkness of content is accompanied by a darkening of setting and era, as Marlow travels up the river, he leaves civilization behind and slowly the jungle begins to creep in and block out the sun. Also as he travels up the river he seems to be traveling back in time as he leaves the Late 1800's behind he arrives in the Congo which is governed with a brutal 1600th century mentality of the natives as nothing less than cheap expendable work mules to be put down at the first sign of trouble, next he encounters the traders up river and the managers who rule their outposts like feudal lords constantly fighting amongst themselves for the favour of the all powerful company. finally Marlow finds Kurtz atthe source of the river who rules over his his violent tribal band of natives as a god. This is especially disturbing because all the other traders have been immensely envious of him -to the point of considering murder. This is a perfect portrait of evil because it shows the willingness of men ( it is always men) to dash enlightenment, morality and progress on the rocks in favour of their self interest and dreams of absolute rule.
Frankenstein frightened me but not for the reason it should have. Frankenstein frightened me because the novels creation reveals a world frightened by change and progress and enlightenment, when even in the novel it was Victors faliure to do proper followup not the science itself that caused the problem. Heart of Darkness show that evil part of humanity that would stop progress to wallow in primitiveness.
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